Frederick Sanger, who died recently at the age of 95, won two Nobel prizes in chemistry for his methods for sequencing proteins and DNA. Proteins were of more direct interest to many people because many disease-causing mutations ...

The Human Genome Project concluded in 2003, but many of its benefits are only now being realized, according to Alan Guttmacher, director of the National Institutes of Health's Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of ...

Researchers have identified a genomic variant strongly associated with sensitivity to the sun, brown hair, blue eyes – and freckles. In the study of Icelanders the researchers uncovered an intricate pathway involving the ...

Our skin plays host to millions of beneficial and potentially disease-causing microorganisms; however, whether our immune system influences these microbial communities to prevent disease is unknown. In a study published online ...

The key to future HIV treatment could be hidden right in our own genes. Everyone who becomes infected deploys defense strategies, and some even manage to hold the virus at bay without any therapy at all. This immune system ...

With their participation in the completion of the largest cloud-based analysis of genome sequence data, researchers from the Baylor College of Medicine Human Genome Sequencing Center are helping to usher genomic scientists ...

Through analysis of the human genome, Basle scientists have identified molecules and compounds that are related to human memory. In a subsequent pharmacological study with one of the identified compounds, the scientists found ...

Researchers at the Sainte-Justine University Hospital Center and University of Montreal have discovered that the genomic signature inherited by today's 6 million French Canadians from the first 8,500 French settlers who colonized ...

Researchers from University of Copenhagen have discovered big differences in the variability of eating habits among pigs. The newly published study showed that for some (pigs with certain genetic variants) overeating was ...

They were mystery diseases that had stumped doctors for years—adults with strange symptoms and children with neurological problems, mental slowness or muscles too weak to let them stand. Now scientists say they were able ...

Human genome

The human genome is the genome of Homo sapiens, which is stored on 23 chromosome pairs. Twenty-two of these are autosomal chromosome pairs, while the remaining pair is sex-determining. The haploid human genome occupies a total of just over 3 billion DNA base pairs. The Human Genome Project (HGP) produced a reference sequence of the euchromatic human genome, which is used worldwide in biomedical sciences.

The haploid human genome contains an estimated 20,000–25,000 protein-coding genes, far fewer than had been expected before its sequencing. In fact, only about 1.5% of the genome codes for proteins, while the rest consists of RNA genes, regulatory sequences, introns and (controversially) "junk" DNA.